Dialogue

I have been struggling with NaMoWriMo 2015 during the month of November 2015, and like I always do, have hit the proverbial writer's block. I have been attempting to write a novel that is 50, 000 words during the month of November, and by roughly breaking it down into smaller blocks or chunks of time, such as per day, I have been fairly successful to get to the 2,000 words per day goal I have been setting for myself for a while. I do have a few lapses, but eventually it starts to even out, and I have had great success at using the community write-ins in Columbus, Ohio. My first week, I was right about on target, and that is when I reread most of what I had written, and realized I was telling about the character, instead of letting the character create the story with his dialogue. That, of course, is when I also realized most of the verbs were passive tense, which is what most writing coaches tell you not to do. I went back and rewrote a section, and pleased with the results, started working on a new way of writing. My new approach is let the characters tell and create the story.

I was reading on the subject of dialogue at the time, and found an example of dialogue that Herman Melville had written in Moby Dick that sort of tells the story, and was more of what I wanted to do with my character and his dialogue.

"Whosoever of ye," says Captain Ahab, exhorting his crew on the deck of the Pequod, "raises me a white-head whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke--look ye, whoever raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!"

A reader can almost see the face of the Captain, with his blustery face weathered by the storms of the seas, and his lips pursed as he is almost spitting as he speaks to his crew....and I can see how this might be what I would want to do with my character. Starting with that as my basic template for all dialogue, I am working from the character....what would my main character say and do, and what is the way he would do it? So, for my novel for November, I am writing a computer hacker that is a high school kid, with a high iq, possibly a strong sense of curiousity of the workings of the computer networks and hardware that are available to him in his computer lab at his high school. The dialogue isn't too wordy, but I think it is probably nerdy and maybe laced with references to current computer and ham festival events, and other diversions a high school kid would find himself engulfed in.

I, from my personal experiences in high school, remember all the hours spent working on code that didn't always work the first time out, and reverse engineering those programs of those that we admired....and learning how the languages worked. Of course, the school cafeteria and the computer lab were the two main conversation settings. So, that is what I am working toward, at least until the last day of November. To others, working on NaMoWriMo, good luck...and see you on the other side. Tag: